Quid fortasse malum fiat?

These are the notes for "Beautiful, Damn Hard, Increasingly Useful."

( Read more... )

How Dinosaur Extinction Gave Us Fruit

I found this video entertaining for its discussion of r-strategy vs. k-strategy reproduction in plants.  Interestingly, during the time of large sauropods, they broke up the forests so much that most plants preferred to make many small seeds rather than fewer large seeds.  They had to capitalize on the disturbances to find a place and sprout.  In other words, most or all of the plants in those forest behaved like weeds, which are designed to cover disturbed ground as fast as possible.

Later on, after the sauropods died out, the forest canopy became closed rather than open, the forest floor darker.  The animals were much smaller, and well suited to distributing seeds.  So plants began making larger fruit to bribe the animals to carry their seeds around.

An interesting fork appears before us now, as humans have wiped out almost all large animals.  Normally this would lead to dense dark forests, and thus, more and larger fruits.  But humans are more disruptive than even the sauropods.  We are creating conditions that favor the weed strategy again.  Except for the bit where we really love large, sweet fruits and will go farther than any other species to propagate plants that we like.  That makes it rather a toss-up how plants will respond.

Today is mostly cloudy, humid, and hot.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/16/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

I'm hearing thunder and dark clouds are overhead.

This is today's freebie. It was inspired by a prompt from dialecticdreamer. It also fills the "defenestration" square in my 7-1-25 card for the Western Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the series Frankenstein's Family. It follows "Incompetence, Sloppy Thinking, and Laziness" so read that first or this won't make much sense.

( Read more... )

The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED. Thank you for your time and attention. Please keep an eye on this page as I am still writing.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "anything goes." I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

Note that our internet connection has been bad for well over a month. Sometimes it's down completely, other times things like Dreamwidth and searches won't run. So I'm losing a lot of work time and may only have access for half a day or less. Given this limitation, there's a higher chance of actually getting things written for prompts that use characters, settings, etc. that are already established.

Two poems recently attracted attention with regards to extending their story arcs, so anyone can ask for a followup to these:
"Incompetence, Sloppy Thinking, and Laziness" -- Victor is displeased with Ghenadie shirking work assigned as fines.
"An Interest in the Affairs of Your Government" -- Frank the Crank accidentally gets elected to the City Council in Mercedes.

Stuck for ideas? You can find prompts by ...
* browsing planned poems for Aquariana and the Maldives, The Big One, Broken Angels, Calliope and Vagary, Officer Pink and Turq, Pips and Joshua, or Shiv. (Some of these I've already done, so they're not all up to date, but others I haven't done yet.)
* browsing my Serial Poetry page for favorite threads or characters.
* browsing my QUILTBAG list, Romantic Orientations in My Characters, Sexual Orientations in My Characters, Gender Identities in My Characters, or My Characters with Disabilities for favorites.
* naming a poetic form you'd like to see written.
* picking a prompt from my current bingo cards: Western Bingo Card 7-1-25
* picking some from the Bingo Generator prompt lists.
* looking up fun tropes on Fanlore.
* choosing an unusual word.
* plugging a favorite topic into your search engine and choosing a picture that looks interesting.
* anything short. I could especially use short poems today as other prompts are likely to run long.
* standalone ideas, if you're a fan of that rather than series.

What Is a Poetry Fishbowl?

Writing is usually considered a solitary pursuit. One exception to this is a fascinating exercise called a "fishbowl." This has various forms, but all of them basically involve some kind of writing in public, usually with interaction between author and audience. A famous example is Harlan Ellison's series of "stories under glass" in which he sits in a bookstore window and writes a new story based on an idea that someone gives him. Writing classes sometimes include a version where students watch each other write, often with students calling out suggestions which are chalked up on the blackboard for those writing to use as inspiration.

In this online version of a Poetry Fishbowl, I begin by setting a theme; today's theme is "anything goes." I invite people to suggest characters, settings, and other things of any type. Then I use those prompts as inspiration for writing poems.

( New to the fishbowl? Read all about it! )

dialecticdreamer is hosting Magpie Monday with a theme of "Surprises and Celebrations."

I write mostly gentle fiction (with warnings when I skirt more aggressive elements, of course) which doesn’t exclude drama. With the theme of “surprises and celebrations,” readers can offer negative surprises. The range for prompt ideas is as wide as the readers can explain. “Cold Cash is surprised when he is brought in for questioning by the Feds after the attempt to kidnap the Cort twins,” is a legitimate prompt idea. It is not, however, planned for the story arc.

Today is partly sunny and mild. It drizzled for much of yesterday.

I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 7/14/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 7/14/25 -- I picked a chocolate cherry tomato from the new picnic table.

EDIT 7/14/25 -- I picked a few blackberries. The first crop is done, the second is not ripe yet.

EDIT 7/14/25 -- I watered both picnic table gardens.